FTIR Facility

We are very pleased to announce that our new FTIR facility is now available for analysing molecular contamination witness plates in accordance with ECSS-Q-ST-70-05C on site. With this we can now offer MOC plate processing on-site for bakeouts and TVAC testing (if required) which will reduce the time between pre-bake qualification of the chamber and beginning hardware bakeouts.

We also have an ATR module for the system which will serve our outgassing facility for analysis of any condensate deposited on the collection mirrors during testing (at customer request, of course).

Outgassing ESA Certification

Last year our outgassing facility took part in the inter-laboratory comparison for ECSS-Q-ST-70-02C and in March this year we were told to anticipate an ESA certification for our outgassing facility.

We have conducted outgassing testing for over 20 years and it is an increasingly popular test we are contracted to perform. The impending ESA certification of our outgassing laboratory is a testimony to the diligence and skill of the facility manager, Sue.

We have had a very busy start to the year which is why ours news updates have been so few in the past 3 months. We are still very busy with test work (thermal vacuum bakeouts and thermal vacuum cycling) as well as building a large piece of bespoke test equipment for a new customer.

TVAC#1 has been down for maintenance longer than scheduled, primarily due to the sudden influx of test work at the beginning of the year which demanded our attention. We are now just about to begin pumping down and leak testing TVAC#1 and checking the new T/C's and heaters we have fitted. We will also be fitting a PID control unit for the IR heaters to this vacuum chamber so that it has the same capability as TVAC#2.

We have also had delays in obtaining materials required for commissioning our FTIR system for contamination monitoring during bakeouts. We now have everything in stock and will be working to get this established as soon as possible. Our first use of this will be to run blank bakes on our TVAC#1 vacuum test chamber to get it back in service. We will then be able to offer in-house FTIR analysis for contamination control for both our thermal vacuum bakeout facilities.

Finally, we have not reviewed our Outgassing (ECSS-Q-ST-70-02) facility charges for over 4 years and as such a price for this service is planned for later in the year. We will be announcing any changes via our news blog and our newsletter.

We are back and already started on 2019! We have test work running throughout January, a solar simulator in the final stages before shipping, modifications to complete for the TVAC#1 thermal vacuum test chamber and an additional premises to move some of our UV and lamp testing facilities into. It's already looking rather busy.

As always, news updates and announcements will be made on our news blog and via our twitter account, but for now we just wanted to wish all of our customers a Happy New Year and say we look forward to working with you in 2019!

Test House

All of our test house services (thermal vacuum chambers, outgassing test facility and vacuum UV exposure chambers) have been incredibly busy this year. We received delivery of our new vacuum chamber TVAC#2 in the last few days of 2017 and by July 2018 the system was put to work for flight hardware bakeouts and several thermal vacuum cycling tests. TVAC#1 is currently down for maintenance and should be back online beginning of 2019.

In June we also supported the 2018 edition of 'Aerospace Test & Validation' with various images from our test house equipment and solar simulator products. ​This is a new publication from the publishers of the Test House Directory focused specifically on the Aerospace industry. ​You can read the digital version here.

Our outgassing facility has been extremely busy also, with our facility taking part in the ESA inter-laboratory ECSS-Q-ST-70-02C outgassing quantification study in July this year.

In 2019 we will be expanding our test facilities to include FTIR capabilities. Check our news page or follow us on Twitter for announcements on this.

Aerospace Test & Validation - 2018 featuring TS-Space Systems cover

Unisim Compact Solar Simulator - close match solar simulator for small research applications

Solar Simulators

Our solar simulator builds have also been consistent throughout the year, with several of our smaller Unisim Compact solar simulator systems shipping out. We have also had some larger system builds with custom specifications. We are also looking to at a short R&D project for our Unisim N-Zone simulators which will push their capabilities into larger working areas. The materials for this have just been delivered and will be scheduled when we start 2019.

Christmas Closing

We would like to thank all of our customers, old and new, for continuing to select our products and services in 2018 and we look forward to working with you in the future. From all of us at TS-Space Systems, we'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year for 2019!

Last day opening 2018: Friday December 21stFirst day opening 2019: Wednesday January 2nd

Solar Simulators

We have been busy in the second half of 2018 with, amongst other projects, several large simulator builds. Our Unisim Compact range of small, close-match solar simulators continue to also prove popular and our last system in stock has just shipped to the University of New South Wales.

We are continuing to work on the application of LED technology to our close-match simulators and have some interesting R&D work coming up in 2019 which will take our N-Zone solar simulator design to large area applications.

TVAC Chambers

2018 has been very busy for our thermal vacuum chambers TVAC#1 and TVAC#2 as we have conducted bakeout and TVAC cycling work for a range of customers, including quite a lot of components for the ESA Solar Orbiter mission.

​We are currently designing a full IR heat shroud for TVAC#2 to be fitted in 2019. We had hoped to complete in late 2018 but demand for the chamber has meant maintenance time has been limited.

FTIR Analysis

We are excited to announce that we will be expanding our lab capabilities to include FTIR analysis via transmission and ATR in early 2019. This facility will primarily be used for analysing molecular witness plates for contamination control during vacuum bakeouts. However, we will also be offering FTIR analysis of condensables collected from our standard outgassing test. There will be further announcements via this news page and our main test facilities page when this becomes available.

We are pleased to announce that our second thermal vacuum test chamber, TVAC#2, is now fully tested and online. In the first week already we have managed to accommodate a last-minute test requirement for a customer and we are now pre-baking the chamber in preparation for a series of flight hardware bakeouts.

The chamber features:

PID controlled thermal plate with resistive heating and liquid channels for cooling either by chiller circulator or LN2

Cold trap with removable fascia for lab analysis if required

QCM for bakeout monitoring

Residual Gas Analyser (Hiden Analytical)

Standard 16 T-type thermocouple channels (more channels, or different TC types can be added with notice)

We also have a multi-part shroud under manufacture which will use the same resistive heating and fluid line design as the thermal plate. This is scheduled to be installed towards the end of the year when we tend to have more downtime for our test house facilities.

Aerospace Test & Validation

We are very proud to support the 2018 edition of Aerospace Test & Validation, the front cover of which features images from our test house. You can read the digital version here https://t.co/wP9b8Mhtq4

This is a new publication from the publishers of the Test House Directory focused specifically on the Aerospace industry. ​You can read the digital version here.​

TVAC#2 Update

We are progressing with the commissioning of our new thermal vacuum test chamber TVAC#2.

The newly designed and installed thermal interface plate, has been tested for positive temperatures. PID control software developed for this new system has also been tested and tuned to achieve a high level of thermal control and stability.

We have also Argon leak tested the system and we are currently awaiting for some custom machined parts to cure some small leaks which were discovered during this process.

We will then be conducting negative temperature control tests with LN2 before we measure and specify the thermal uniformity of the interface plate. We are currently on schedule to complete these tasks by the end of the month. Please follow our news and other feeds for further updates.

As you are no doubt aware by the multitude of emails you will have received from every website you've ever visited, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on the 25/05/18. It is essentially an attempt to bring a unified set of regulations to the privacy of data collected by websites and transparency to how/why websites collect their users' data. We would like to draw your attention to the changes we have made to our website and associated policies in order to comply with these regulations.

Firstly, we would like to make clear that the only information we collect is via our Contact page and Test Quote Request form and this information is only ever used to keep a record of your enquiry, facilitate our response and, if you opted in, send the occasional newsletter. We have never and will never sell or pass on our user's data to third party companies. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.

As stated in our Cookie Policy our side does use Google analytics cookies for monitoring site usage.

In order to comply with the upcoming GDPR regulations we have carried out the following:

All user data submitted to date via our Contact Page and Test Quote Request form have been deleted. Any new submissions via these forms must agree to the stated Terms and Conditions and actively opt-in to our newsletter. Please note that our newsletter was always an opt-in for our users, but we have concluded this is the easiest and safest way to ensure your privacy preferences are met and to avoid any contravention of the GDPR regulations.

If you have any questions or concerns about what this means with regard to your data or privacy when using our website, please feel free to contact us.

The installation of our new thermal vacuum chamber is slightly behind schedule but we are still on track to start testing the vacuum and thermal control system at the end of this month. New custom flanges for the old gate valve port are in the final stages of fabrication and finishing, the scroll and mag-lev turbo molecular pumps are installed and the control systems for the thermal plate are starting testing the end of this week.

TVAC#2 has water cooled door seals and chamber walls which means it will be capable of higher maximum temperatures than TVAC#1. We are also installing a thermal plate design we developed for a customer several years ago to achieve a very uniform temperature when using LN2 for cold temperatures and dwells.

There are also further re-designs from the thermal system of TVAC#1 which will be tested in TVAC#2 and will be used to upgrade TVAC#1 in the future.

Follow this blog for future updates or keep an eye on our test house page for when TVAC#2 is fully operational.